Catholic Church still influencing the Vote

There is a Seperation between Church and State in this country, because its well established through history that the Roman Catholic Church often liked to get its paws deep into the political fibers to manipulate countries. At best efforts of the United States, its obvious the Church still has some grip, this time though, its on voters.

I know a few Catholics currently, one being my father, and a few friends. Lately apparently the church is trying to persuade the voters how to vote by telling them. The church is telling them to vote based on ethics, abortion, gay marriage, etc. They are actively stating that a good little catholic will vote the way the church says, or they shouldnt be voting at all...

looks like the churches paws are still trying to manipulate our government

It used to be more of an even game as Catholics were predominantly in large Urban areas that went Democratic. And the Protestant grip on "bible belt" areas went Republican.

Now the efforts to wedge voters has successfully divided practically all organized religion over the past 20 years to Republicans.

Yes, it's "enforced morality issues" like Pro-Life and Anti-Gay movements that did it...along with some good posturing from the right that "all Dems are immoral secular anti-God heathens."

God bless those lying RNC mouthpieces.

And the pulpit politics continue today. Somewhat effectively from the left, that organizes African American communities via churches... but extremely successfully by the right that gets delivered the huge white lower middle class protestant voting block via Pastoral bullying.

For some Baptists I know (like my Father) Religion IS politics and politcs IS religion...and God votes Republican and not even a statement from that long haired hippie Jesus to the contrary would change his mind.

WOW
One votes based upon their moral beliefs - or at least they should. To target Catholics only in your argument is naive at best. Do you think that those of the Jewish faith are any different? Or, Christian fundamentalist for that matter? I think if you do your research, you'll find that the "Church" has taken no postion with respect to specific candidiates. To endorse specific candidates would jeopardize the tax exempt status of any religious organization. I think it's rather ironic though, your argument would anticipate the "Church" supporting Bush rather than a Catholic (or at least in name only) in John Kerry. Sounds morre to me like a problem withh organized religion than anything else.
CS

BTW, Separation of church and state has nothing to do with your position. The concept of separation of church and state was to ensure that the state did not/does not impose its religious beliefs upon the people. That has nothing to do with the people voting for the candidates and positions of their choice. What you're actually suggesting is something in oppostion to our First Amendemnt rights.

[edit on 8/29/2004 by CommonSense]

It gets deeper than this, some catholics I know think it would be a sin to vote democratic.

Personally, if that's the view, then it should be a sin for them to vote at all.

The fact is - most Catholics are democrats. Try and figure that one out.

Have to agree that Roman Cathloics seem to be an odd choice to exemplify religious-based voting. If you look at the stats, Jews, Mormons, and Southern Baptists in the US all vote in blocs much, much more consistantly and prevalently than Catholics.

alienasia: I know some Catholics from El Salvador who would say just the opposite.

-koji K.

[edit on 29-8-2004 by koji_K]

If Michael Moore and France can influence the vote, then the Catholic church has every right to do the same.

Nobody is forced to have their political opinion changed by any force... the Church can only alter your vote if you allow it to, or percieve its stance as the correct one.

[edit on 8/29/2004 by Odd]

This goes farther then just micheal moore trying to sway votes, we're talking one of the biggest organizations saying basically "If you dont vote ______ way you'll go to hell." things like that are alot stronger on sheep-like masses then michael moores "documentaries"

Well, look at it this way...

It's not influencing you.

I was raised Catholic, and it's not influencing me.

Michael Moore tells people "if you don't vote this way, then you are evil, and therefore are keeping the black man down." The Pope and his Pope Squad tell people "If you don't vote this way, then I, who am a mortal representative of a Divine force and am therefore incapable of performing my true duties, say that you are evil."

I don't really think it's a threat.

Many in this thread have taken what I feel is an excessively simplistic view of the way Catholics vote. Some Catholics honestly believe and will gladly tell you that if you don't vote for Bush and other right-wing candidates, you are opposing God and supporting Satan. Unfortunately, they are usually the ones who get heard. On the other hand, there are other Catholics (like myself) who don't agree with that thinking and vote for other candidates in good conscience. There have been some official statements by the U.S. bishops that seem to strongly suggest that Catholics cannot in good conscience vote for certain candidates who support abortion and whatnot. However, they do not exactly tell anybody who to vote for per se. Also, if I'm not mistaken, I believe somebody higher up in Rome (Cardinal Ratzinger, maybe... can't remember off the top of my head) actually made a statement to the effect that voting is a very personal choice and that individual Catholics must very carefully weigh all the major issues and decide for themselves which candidate to vote for, in other words under no circumstances should Catholics see any statement as a demand that they vote for any particular candidate. Yes, if you are a Catholic and you vote for a pro-abortion candidate because you support abortion, then the Church is going to say that that is a sin. That's a no-brainer. You can't just expect the Catholic Church, or anybody else for that matter to just say that anything goes when it comes to politics. I mean, everybody votes and most think others should vote a certain way based on their personal beliefs about what is good and what is not. If the Catholic Church tells people they ought to consider what is right and wrong on certain issues when they vote, what is wrong with that? If the ACLU or the NRA tells people to vote for specific candidates, nobody is going to accuse them of trying to meddle in the government or control the way people vote. When some of these fundamentalist evangelical pastors tell their congregations straight up, "If you don't vote for Bush this November, you're not a Christian," or some such nonsense, the person who started this thread doesn't mention that in his/her post. But when the Catholic Church tells people, "The Catholic Church believes that abortion is seriously wrong. Catholics should take this into serious consideration when voting," he/she starts a thread about how the Catholics Church is always trying to manipulate governments. Please, in the United States and other countries with representative governments every interest group, etc. tries to exert some force on the government. I don't see the need to single out just the Catholic Church here. There is supposed to be a separation of church and state to a significant extent, and I support that. That is the reason for laws saying that if religious groups endorse specific candidates or parties, they lose their tax exempt status. However, there are no laws saying that religious leaders can't teach on morality and tell people that they should vote based on their conscience. At the end of the day, we all vote based on conscience, anyway.

Personally, I think it would do this whole country a lot of good for us to all step out of this rigid two-party system in which every four years we are given what a lot of us see as two lousy choices and have to choose the lesser of two evils. I am not voting for Kerry or Bush, because I disagree with both of them on a lot of issues. I am voting for an independent candidate instead. If Catholics don't want to vote for Bush, the Church isn't telling them they have to. If Catholics don't want to vote for Kerry, the Church isn't telling them to. If Catholics don't want to vote for either one, the Church isn't telling them they have to. There are plenty of candidates out there, and the Church isn't telling anybody to vote for any of them. It is simply telling them to vote for candidates who support what it feels are good, sound moral principles. Again, people do that all the time. There is nothing wrong with it. I don't understand why this is such a big deal. The First Amendment guarantees that the people will not have any religion forced upon them by the government. It does not guarantee that people will not vote with their consciences or that people will not try to get others to agree with their moral beliefs.

So what?

So the Catholic church is saying that there is a political party that represents their beliefs. This is no different then ANY OTHER political group. It's the same as all other religions, the same as the gun owners block, the same as the Union blocks, the same as the lawyer blocks ect ect ect ect.

And the fact is that Republicans do represent Catholic teachings - they are anti gay marige and anti abortion as opposed to the Democrats. And these are the Catholic church's two largest political issues.

Basically stop being afraid of the Church. It's not going to take over the country and force you to pray to Jesus. It is simply urging it's members to vote in accordance with the teachings it's members WILLINGLY PRACTICE AND BELIEVE IN. It's the same as any other lobby group, only without financial contributions - unlike most others.